The Earth doesn't always fart, but when it does...

[zacmil]

I saw an old Top Gear episode where they raced a methane powered car. The collected the methane from a cow farm. They also compared a car powered by methane made from human waste, but there didnt explain where they got it from. Ewwww...

The cow methane came in second and the human methane came in last to the conventional powered version of the car.

Haha! I actually think I remember seeing that episode.

[szh]

Actually, I think I was thinking of helium.


I agree, you could collect some methane and generate some electricity!
I think the Mythbusters once modified a lawnmower to run on methane for an episode once.
They visited a farmer that would collect the methane from all his cow's poop and run some of his equipment with the fumes.

haha yeah thats helium thats ganna be gone by 2020...

Unless they can get Hydrogen fusion energy reactors going effectively to produce energy ... 'cause the outcome of Hydrogen fusion is Helium plus lots of energy.

Z

[alms24sebring]

and radiation...

[audtatious]

My farts are known to make wallpaper fall. That count?

[C-Kwik]

Keep this in mind, Hybrid cars will do absolutely nothing to help the ozone, contrary to popular belief. The amount of cars on the road today are incapable of providing the amount of geenhouse gasses necessary to deplete the ozone layer, and warm the ocean....thus melting permafrost.

CO2 output is directly related to how efficient a vehicle is for a given fuel source. Gasoline is made up of many hydrocarbons so it varies slightly based on the actual formulation. But as an example, when burning octane, you get 8 CO2 molecules for each molecule of octane burned. The more fuel you burn, the more CO2 you get. The overall impact as of yet is probably not significant as they still only make up a small percentage of the cars on the road. But over time, its impact should grow as people begin replacing gasoline vehicles with hybrids. Plug-in hybrids stand to make even more significant impacts as power plant energy is more efficiently produced. If alternative energy sources ever become prevalent, then it would hugely reduce the GHG emissions.

I can't say with certainty how GHG affects ozone (I do know there are feedbacks to each other), but GHG will and does trap energy through the diffraction of infrared light. This is significant because 70% of the energy re-emitted back into space is in the infrared spectrum. The other 30% is due to albedo which is basically just reflection of the incoming light waves. We have satellites that measure incoming and outgoing EM waves. If we were in equilibrium, the energy coming in should equal the energy going out. It doesn't. The energy going out is less which means that much energy is staying here. Moreover, analysis of what range of EM waves are decreased shows its in the range associated with absorption from CO2.

If these gases were alone trying to beat an ozone layer, it would take thousands upon thousands of years just to get to a 50% depletion. Even still, factoring in every other greenhouse gas, even if there were no cars on the roads everywhere in the road nothing would or could stop the natural occuring global warming due to currents from the warmer indian ocean flowing into the colder atlantic ocean.

From a quick search, it appears GHG effects on the ozone layer is actually a link between temperature and the ozone. To my knowledge, the biggest direct impact on the ozone layer came from CFC's, which have been heavily regulated. The primary effect the temperature to ozone layer link appears to be having is a delay in the ozone recovery by about 20 years. So you are correct in saying the effects on ozone are probably minor. But the climate change debate centers around the effects of higher temperature and its cause.

As for the currents, perhaps you need to expand further, but the implication seems to be that stored energy in the water from the Indian Ocean is ultimately being transferred to the world. That's not impossible, but I think the effect we would see then is that more energy would be measured leaving the planet than coming in. Which is not the case.

My theory is that cars only cause from 1 to 5% of the greenhouse gasses in the current state, as we really haven't had cars that long anyway.

Its actually about 20%. And we've had cars for more than 100 years. In the context of GHG, its quite relevant considering we didn't start contributing GHG to the environment in significant numbers until the industrial revolution. I suspect the contribution of GHG from cars initially was small because few people could afford them. But there are hundreds of millions of them now (probably approaching a billion by now).

[szh]

and radiation...

Not so much from fusion.

Z

[float_6969]

Our local trash dump re-captures it's methane and runs it to an on-site electrical generator and sells the power back to the local power company. They were at one point talking about trying to find a company that would convert their trash collection trucks to run on methane as well, but I don't think anything ever came of it.

[hannibal]

Thats smart technology right there. I'm think we'll see more of this in the future.

More and more electricity is generated from natural gas. Coal pollutes so much more but gas is relatively clean. Tons of transit agencies have buses that run on natural gas. I've heard that Chevy and Dodge with be offering natural gas powered version of their trucks.

Currently, its only feasible for fleet vehicles, mainly due to the lack of refueling infrastructure. But that will change over time too, especially with natural gas prices at historic lows.

[TTkickedin]

Just the type of replies I like. Thanks for Posting guys!

Keep this in mind, Hybrid cars will do absolutely nothing to help the ozone, contrary to popular belief. The amount of cars on the road today are incapable of providing the amount of geenhouse gasses necessary to deplete the ozone layer, and warm the ocean....thus melting permafrost.

CO2 output is directly related to how efficient a vehicle is for a given fuel source. Gasoline is made up of many hydrocarbons so it varies slightly based on the actual formulation. But as an example, when burning octane, you get 8 CO2 molecules for each molecule of octane burned. The more fuel you burn, the more CO2 you get. The overall impact as of yet is probably not significant as they still only make up a small percentage of the cars on the road. But over time, its impact should grow as people begin replacing gasoline vehicles with hybrids. Plug-in hybrids stand to make even more significant impacts as power plant energy is more efficiently produced. If alternative energy sources ever become prevalent, then it would hugely reduce the GHG emissions.

Right. Totally agree with you on this. The only thing really preventing hybrids from dominating the automotive industry is the fact that hybrids are damaging the environment not by being driven, but the manufacture of the vehicles. The hybrid car's battery manufacturing process takes much more work to manufacture than a conventional car battery. The entire process burns more fossil fuels than manufacturing a hummer takes.

But they say that any imbalance from production to 50 years down the road is the lifetime emissions of the cars, and conventional cars do come out on top. But I think the best way to get rid of the imbalance altogether is to find a gasoline replacement, not manufacture new technologies that haven't been tested enough. replacing the entire fleet of cars with electric hybrids would create more emissions, even with a phase-out style for hybrid replacements. the whole idea really should be looking into a gasoline replacement outright, and manufacture a conversion kit because we definitely have that technology, and wouldn't require newer technologies to be made when they're already there. But i'll touch on how useless this motive is even if manufacturing hybrids was 100% efficient.

I can't say with certainty how GHG affects ozone (I do know there are feedbacks to each other), but GHG will and does trap energy through the diffraction of infrared light. This is significant because 70% of the energy re-emitted back into space is in the infrared spectrum. The other 30% is due to albedo which is basically just reflection of the incoming light waves. We have satellites that measure incoming and outgoing EM waves. If we were in equilibrium, the energy coming in should equal the energy going out. It doesn't. The energy going out is less which means that much energy is staying here. Moreover, analysis of what range of EM waves are decreased shows its in the range associated with absorption from CO2.

True. I do bet that c02 can store Infrared rays. But mankind alone is not the single most cause for global warming. People don't seem to take in account that the world emits its own greenhouse gases at astronomically high levels and has done so at a time before cars and industrialization! It's even been roughly 18 times greater than the levels it is at today. Mind you, that's just with nature alone.

If these gases were alone trying to beat an ozone layer, it would take thousands upon thousands of years just to get to a 50% depletion. Even still, factoring in every other greenhouse gas, even if there were no cars on the roads everywhere in the road nothing would or could stop the natural occuring global warming due to currents from the warmer indian ocean flowing into the colder atlantic ocean.

From a quick search, it appears GHG effects on the ozone layer is actually a link between temperature and the ozone. To my knowledge, the biggest direct impact on the ozone layer came from CFC's, which have been heavily regulated. The primary effect the temperature to ozone layer link appears to be having is a delay in the ozone recovery by about 20 years. So you are correct in saying the effects on ozone are probably minor. But the climate change debate centers around the effects of higher temperature and its cause.

It's not just that c02 changing climate is minor, it's a definite cause, but 96ish % of the c02 levels we have are provided by nature itself. The other 4% comes from gas from vehicles, a major chunk of the 4% coming from factories and manufacturing plants (2-3% of it)

Think about this as well, while buildings and compounds make up a large chunk of that 4%, gasoline is charged at about 300% tax and markup than what it should be, while building fuel is only marked up and taxed at 5%. Buildings and factories almost double the amount of GHG that cars put out, but gas is taxed and marked up EXTREMELY HIGH!! It's honestly doing more damage to the economy and nations than it is to our environment. And THAT is a change that is 100% based off of mankind. Save the economy, not the ecosystem that's damaging itself naturally....And has before.


Furthermore, not only have GHG's been produced higher than we are capable of naturally, climate changes have happened in the past naturally. Ancient volcanos have been known to spew out greenhouse gases at levels far greater than the levels of greenhouse gases we have right now, thousands of years ago, we all know of the ice age that happened before human GHG's. Natural occurences. And we just do not have the means to stop natural occurences.

As for the currents, perhaps you need to expand further, but the implication seems to be that stored energy in the water from the Indian Ocean is ultimately being transferred to the world. That's not impossible, but I think the effect we would see then is that more energy would be measured leaving the planet than coming in. Which is not the case.

The atlantic ocean basin has warmed more than any other basin since the mid-20th century. There's been a few tests proving the hypothesis that currents from the Warmer indian ocean have warmed the surface temperature of the atlantic. It shows that since 1870, temperatures in the indian ocean have risen in correlation to how much the atlantic has risen.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/08/w ... h-century/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/08/w ... h-century/

My theory is that cars only cause from 1 to 5% of the greenhouse gasses in the current state, as we really haven't had cars that long anyway.

Its actually about 20%. And we've had cars for more than 100 years. In the context of GHG, its quite relevant considering we didn't start contributing GHG to the environment in significant numbers until the industrial revolution. I suspect the contribution of GHG from cars initially was small because few people could afford them. But there are hundreds of millions of them now (probably approaching a billion by now).

20% of the 4-5% c02 levels that mankind contributes, sure, maybe that's true! But we're talking such a small number here. What good would getting rid of less than 1% of the output of c02 do for the environment? It really is just causing us to stress ourselves out of over somethign that happens naturally. There's no power in mankind that can stop natural climate change. It's happened in the past, the ice age happened before mankind existed, and mankind want's to step in front of mother nature and prevent it from happening, or delay it? Even if we tried, it would be of no actual use.

Say every single plant was stopped, every car and every powerplant ceased to exist in one hour. Still, the naturally occuring 96% c02 levels that nature gives out will continue to give out, methane pockets deep in the ocean will continue to bubble up. GHG's will naturally produce. Organisms will let out GHG's naturally just by living. Natural climate change will still occur because that's just how the world works. Getting rid of cars and taxing ourselves hard is just making our lives even harder for no good reason just because mankind doesn't want to believe that the world will end naturally, even though it has in the past.

The only thing I will agree 100% with is that we need to find alternative energy, but not for the sole purpose of 'saving' the environment...We can't save it, it's a naturally occuring event.

But what we can do is decrease our dependence on foriegn oil and have all forms of alternative energy available to the public as an option from the dealer, aftermarket conversions, and at our gas stations. We're talking LPG, Methanol, E85, gasoline vapor, hydrogen, electricity, etc etc.

What's stopping this ^ from happening? it would open the market to new nationwide businesses to start new markets. It would put money into the american economy and open up new jobs and finally end the recession we're in. It would decrease our major dependence on foriegn oil and keep the world from fighting over these resources. It would stop us from having to go into the atlantic and pacific ocean to drill into ocean habitats.

The least thing we can do is make sure everyone's comfortable until the world inevitably ends and a new race takes over, provided we aren't able to survive another ice age.

[C-Kwik]

Right. Totally agree with you on this. The only thing really preventing hybrids from dominating the automotive industry is the fact that hybrids are damaging the environment not by being driven, but the manufacture of the vehicles. The hybrid car's battery manufacturing process takes much more work to manufacture than a conventional car battery. The entire process burns more fossil fuels than manufacturing a hummer takes.

How much work it takes to build is only part of the equation. A Hummer will pollute much more than that in its lifetime than a Prius. That is probably an unfair comparison, but a similar sized vehicle with an ICE drivetrain will pollute more over its lifetime (including production emissions) than the hybrid. Its the net effect that is important in the long run. Not to mention, the direction hybrids are going is into plug-in hybrids. Depending on the source of electricity used to charge, it can be exceptionally clean by comparison depending on how much time is spent in battery-only mode. This link provides an easy to follow run-down but also cites their sources.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/scienc ... nefits.htm

But they say that any imbalance from production to 50 years down the road is the lifetime emissions of the cars, and conventional cars do come out on top. But I think the best way to get rid of the imbalance altogether is to find a gasoline replacement, not manufacture new technologies that haven't been tested enough. replacing the entire fleet of cars with electric hybrids would create more emissions, even with a phase-out style for hybrid replacements. the whole idea really should be looking into a gasoline replacement outright, and manufacture a conversion kit because we definitely have that technology, and wouldn't require newer technologies to be made when they're already there. But i'll touch on how useless this motive is even if manufacturing hybrids was 100% efficient.

There are a number of fuels, but none have the energy density that gasoline does. That's a tough challenge to overcome. The tank in a CNG Civic takes up a large portion of the trunk and gets less range. Adsorption materials might be helpful, but add cost and complexity to the manufacturing processes for the tanks. The power is down slightly and mileage is similar. It runs cleaner, but ultimately, is still a carbon emitter. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, has the highest hydrogen to carbon ratio which yields the lowest amount of carbon emitted per unit energy. Liquid natural gas is a little denser, but requires insulated tanks and need to release pressure build-up from the phase change that occurs as heat leaks into the tank. A more complicated solution is to re-liquify the excess vapor.

Hydrogen has a couple of hurdles. Like Natural gas, its form at ambient conditions is a gas. So from a storage standpoint, its pretty much the same as with NG. The other problem is the source. Currently, the main source of hydrogen is by reforming methane. Basically, they remove the carbon atom from the methane molecule and end up with 2 hydrogen molecules. So it still releases carbon. Perhaps carbon sequestration of some kind could be utilized but adds additional cost and maybe additional energy. Hydrogen can be extracted from water and doing so is quite clean, but the hydrolyzing process requires energy roughly equal to the amount of energy needed to break the bond between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. It also needs a clean source of water (deionized). How clean it ultimately is is dependent on the source of energy. If we were to ever be able to get to the idealistic point at which all electricity was renewable, and we hadf enough excess capacity, hydrogen could be a viable energy transfer medium. It can be used in ICE processes, but I believe it will still have NOx emissions. FCV's are much cleaner in using the hydrogen, but present an emissions challenge with manufacturing. Its probably still better than gasoline vehicles over a lifetime though.

Ethanol has some promise for being a replacement for gasoline in theory. Its renewable as it takes carbon out of the air to grow the crops necessary to make the fuel and will emit the same amount of carbon (less losses that occur in processing the ethanol from the crop). Basically, it recycles the carbon in the air. But it requires energy to process it. Renewable sources of energy would lower the impact, but the biggest issue is that growing such crops, especially on the scale we need, would reduce the amount of crop used for food. Some overlap can occur where we use parts of the plant that aren't edible, but its still going to be an issue. The sustainable population for the world is estimated to be about 10 billion. We are rapidly approaching that number. As a result, we are already taxing our food sources. We actually have enough food to feed everyone on the planet. Distribution is the challenge. At some point, both total food production and distribution are going to become problems. There is going to be some limitation of the use of ethanol because of this.

Electric cars are the most promising. Renewable sources can bring down emissions to near zero (including production). Battery technology is improving. In fact there is a new discovery that has increased the capacity and reduced recharge times of Li-Ion batteries 10-fold. That would pretty much void most concerns about range and charge times. They can even compromise and lower weight as well.

True. I do bet that c02 can store Infrared rays. But mankind alone is not the single most cause for global warming. People don't seem to take in account that the world emits its own greenhouse gases at astronomically high levels and has done so at a time before cars and industrialization! It's even been roughly 18 times greater than the levels it is at today. Mind you, that's just with nature alone.

Yes, there is a natural emissions of CO2 and methane from the Earth. That has been quite steady for some time though. As a result, Earth has primarily been under a state of equilibrium as far as climate is concerned. The additional CO2 we are emitting moves that equilibrium point up. Its not that we are contributing the most CO2. Its the change in overall CO2 that is the problem. Add to it things we do like deforestation reduces one of the natural sinks for CO2 and it exacerbates the problem.

It's not just that c02 changing climate is minor, it's a definite cause, but 96ish % of the c02 levels we have are provided by nature itself. The other 4% comes from gas from vehicles, a major chunk of the 4% coming from factories and manufacturing plants (2-3% of it)

My response to this should be the same as above, but I'll just use the space to expand a little. The earth emits a certain amount of CO2. For the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to remain steady, the amount going into the atmosphere must equal the amount going out. There are natural sinks for CO2 on earth. If we add more the natural sinks can not absorb it at an equal rate, the net effect is that more CO2 remains in the atmosphere. The amount of CO2 in the air is already quite small. And that such a small amount has teh greenhouse effect it already does means a small change in the CO2 concentration results in big changes to greenhouse effect.

Think about this as well, while buildings and compounds make up a large chunk of that 4%, gasoline is charged at about 300% tax and markup than what it should be, while building fuel is only marked up and taxed at 5%. Buildings and factories almost double the amount of GHG that cars put out, but gas is taxed and marked up EXTREMELY HIGH!! It's honestly doing more damage to the economy and nations than it is to our environment. And THAT is a change that is 100% based off of mankind. Save the economy, not the ecosystem that's damaging itself naturally....And has before.

Gasoline tax in the states are basically a usage tax that is supposed to help maintain and expand our infrastructure as necessary. Last I checked, buildings and factories don't put wear and tear on our roads.

Furthermore, not only have GHG's been produced higher than we are capable of naturally, climate changes have happened in the past naturally. Ancient volcanos have been known to spew out greenhouse gases at levels far greater than the levels of greenhouse gases we have right now, thousands of years ago, we all know of the ice age that happened before human GHG's. Natural occurrences. And we just do not have the means to stop natural occurences.

Other than the intermittent major eruption, volcanic activity has not had a huge impact on climate over the long term. The amount of CO2 emitted through natural processes has remained quite steady. And major volcanic eruptions might actually cool the earth if its strong enough to place sulfur aerosols into the upper atmosphere. But those effects are relatively short lived. In fact, researchers are considering using sulfur aerosols to reduce some of the sunlight that reaches the surface of the planet. I'm a bit weary about it though as that sulfur will eventually make its way down and I don't know how big of an impact it would have on the acidification of lakes and rivers.

The atlantic ocean basin has warmed more than any other basin since the mid-20th century. There's been a few tests proving the hypothesis that currents from the Warmer indian ocean have warmed the surface temperature of the atlantic. It shows that since 1870, temperatures in the indian ocean have risen in correlation to how much the atlantic has risen.

I can't confirm or refute that. But as I said before, if the cause of global warming was attributable to that process, then its basically that some part of the planet is shedding its heat into the atmosphere. Some of that heat would radiate out into space. The flux of energy going out would intuitively have to be higher than the flux of energy coming in. This is not the case.

20% of the 4-5% c02 levels that mankind contributes, sure, maybe that's true! But we're talking such a small number here. What good would getting rid of less than 1% of the output of c02 do for the environment? It really is just causing us to stress ourselves out of over somethign that happens naturally. There's no power in mankind that can stop natural climate change. It's happened in the past, the ice age happened before mankind existed, and mankind want's to step in front of mother nature and prevent it from happening, or delay it? Even if we tried, it would be of no actual use.

again, the effects of CO2 are huge for the amount of actual CO2 in the atmosphere. That is why small changes can have profound effects. Think of it this way. If you had a volume knob that only turned 1 degree and the increase in volume jumped from 0 to make your ears bleed loud in that 1 degree of turn, then even a 0.01 degree turn is going to have a measurable effect on volume. Its an issue of sensitivity.

Say every single plant was stopped, every car and every powerplant ceased to exist in one hour. Still, the naturally occuring 96% c02 levels that nature gives out will continue to give out, methane pockets deep in the ocean will continue to bubble up. GHG's will naturally produce. Organisms will let out GHG's naturally just by living. Natural climate change will still occur because that's just how the world works. Getting rid of cars and taxing ourselves hard is just making our lives even harder for no good reason just because mankind doesn't want to believe that the world will end naturally, even though it has in the past.

Any changes in the GHG content in the atmosphere by only natural sources would be very small and would likely bounce up and down. If there was an upward trend, it would go up very slowly over a long period of time. And much of that would be buffered over time by a reaction from other systems. For example, if CO2 levels increased very slightly over time, its likely that more vegetation would grow and balance that somewhat. The rate at which we are pushing it forward is faster than the earth can compensate for. And as I said, we are also knocking down forests (usually by burning it no less) which add to the problem.

The only thing I will agree 100% with is that we need to find alternative energy, but not for the sole purpose of 'saving' the environment...We can't save it, it's a naturally occuring event.

No, its not. At least not the change in GHG levels.

But what we can do is decrease our dependence on foriegn oil and have all forms of alternative energy available to the public as an option from the dealer, aftermarket conversions, and at our gas stations. We're talking LPG, Methanol, E85, gasoline vapor, hydrogen, electricity, etc etc.

There are lots of good reasons for getting away from oil. Noone, not even my environmental science professor, would deny that. There are a lot of challenges, and the most formidable is the resistance to change.

What's stopping this ^ from happening? it would open the market to new nationwide businesses to start new markets. It would put money into the american economy and open up new jobs and finally end the recession we're in. It would decrease our major dependence on foriegn oil and keep the world from fighting over these resources. It would stop us from having to go into the atlantic and pacific ocean to drill into ocean habitats.

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but the economic aspects are certainly just as complex in their own right.

The least thing we can do is make sure everyone's comfortable until the world inevitably ends and a new race takes over, provided we aren't able to survive another ice age.

Well, according to evolutionary theories, we are always evolving. We may continue to be the "new" race. We'll probably see some small differences in how we look 20,000 years from now. I suspect when the world "ends" it will be catastrophic enough that relatively few other species will survive. Except cockroaches...little bastards just won't die.